Magicians Penn and Teller: the duo are auditioning acts for their Vegas show in new series Fool Us. Photograph: Matt Sayles/AP

Two magic shows on primetime TV might not be proof the art of conjuring is fashionable – as the old journalistic adage has it: "Two's a coincidence, three's a trend," – but the presence of Dynamo: Magician Impossible and Penn and Teller: Fool Us on our screens throws up a fascinating contrast in styles if nothing else.

Penn and Teller, who sprang to fame in the 1980s by appearing to reveal the secrets behind tricks, thereby breaking the magical code of omerta, are the old guard in this pairing. Fool Us is, at heart, no different from the Paul Daniels magic shows of decades past, merely spiced with the addition of some X Factor dynamics. Penn and Teller sit and watch a succession of acts whose prize for fooling them as to how the trick is done will be to appear in their Las Vegas show. The unctuous Jonathan Ross comperes, the audience know their place, and at the end Penn and Teller perform a trick of their own.

The old fashionedness isn't just a product of format. Penn and Teller are historians of magic and their respect for those who are operating within such traditions is palpable, even when they are not fooled by the acts. It's sometimes brilliant – but as another middle-aged, middle-class sleight-of-hand expert takes to the stage, the sense of it all being a cosy parlour game is hard to avoid.

Steven Frayne, who works as Dynamo, takes his magic to the streets. We've seen it before, of course, but his kind of magic gains its effect from being performed right in front of people: their reactions as much as his trickery provide the effect. Sometimes the trickery's entirely secondary to the reaction – on last Thursday's show, a trick that involved a disappearing 2p piece reappearing on a punter's shoulder was first undermined by seeing Dynamo place it there, then it sitting in plain view for several seconds until he claimed to have made it reappear, but was then heightened by the borderline-scared reaction of his victim.

His most startling tricks, all of which involve glass – appearing to slam a mobile phone into a bottle, slide his hand through the lid of a jewellery case to take a bracelet, or pass through a picture window – are truly unnerving, though, and his captive audience reflect only what you sitting on the sofa are thinking: how?

The other big difference between the two is that audience. Where Penn and Teller's is studiobound and conventional, Dynamo appears to seek out either gormless drunks, or those operating at the point where celebrity meets twattery. I was genuinely perplexed about the reaction of one babygro-clad DJ to a trick – "Really, really baff" – assuming it was street slang until it occurred that the DJ was perhaps expressing his bafflement. Still, that made him one of the few to have been tricked and have reacted without using the word "fuck".

It seems apt, somehow, that these two shows should be at this time. Our public life is seeing a festival of debunking, with Rupert Murdoch recast as the Wizard of Oz, the curtain pulled aside to reveal the inner workings of his world. We hate being conned, but we still love to be tricked – it simply has to be benign. And so we switch from tricks being revealed on the news to tricks being played on the magic shows, and balance is restored.